'There’s no practical place to put it other than that. The FAA says this is ridiculous to think this is any hazard.' — Mayor Bloomberg, speaking yesterday to The Post’s editorial boardAP

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It was a decision for the birds.

Port Authority bosses shot down plans to make La Guardia Airport safer in bad weather so the city could build a bird-magnet trash-transfer station that increases the danger of deadly plane crashes, The Post has learned.

Federal Aviation Administration brass in Washington went along with the bird-brained scheme, and warned Queens-based staffers “not to object” to the transfer station 2,200 feet from La Guardia Runway 31, documents show.

Experts expect the transfer station will draw trash-hungry birds — and birds cause plane crashes, including the January 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson” ditching of a US Airways jet in the Hudson River by hero pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.

Mayor Bloomberg yesterday defended the safety compromise before The Post’s editorial board, saying it is necessary to implement the city’s trash management plan.

Moving the station from its location in College Point — 2,200 feet across Flushing Bay from La Guardia Runway 31 — would be “economically expensive, and I don’t know where you’d go,” he said.

“There’s no practical place to put it other than that,” Bloomberg said. “The FAA says this is ridiculous to think this is any hazard.”

Not that Bloomberg loves birds — he noted the city’s efforts to remove them from around the airports. Asked if the birds should be shot, Bloomberg said: “I don’t know that shooting is the right word . . . The meat goes to soup kitchens and that sort of thing.”

In July 2007, the Port Authority told the city that it wanted to build a “Category II Instrument Landing Approach” system for Runway 31 to make landings safer in bad weather.

Because such systems let planes land at low altitudes, the Port Authority’s plans jeopardized construction of the 100-foot-tall transfer station.

Ed Skyler, a top deputy to Bloomberg, said the Port Authority plan was a “surprise,” and the city went to work fighting it.

The Port Authority’s pursuit of the runway system “will have the unintended, but unavoidable consequence of undermining the city’s Solid Waste Management Plan” — and thus the transfer station, Skyler said in a February 2008 letter to the Port Authority’s then-executive director, Anthony Shorris.

“I request that the Port Authority withdraw” its request to build the system, Skyler wrote, suggesting it build a less restrictive Category I system instead.

Three months later, in a letter to the FAA, the Port Authority went along, adopting Skyler’s request that it abandon plans for a Category II Instrument Landing System.

That May 2008 letter claimed that an FAA analysis found that a Category II system was impractical for the runway. Instead, the letter said, the Port Authority would pursue a system even less sophisticated than Skyler’s compromise, “while allowing the city to meet its solid waste management objectives.”

“The Port Authority believes this is a win for all parties,” the letter said.

Five months later, in October 2008, Queens-based FAA staffers were warned that FAA headquarters in Washington had overruled their objections to the city’s plans.

“These have gone all the way to the top,” one Queens-based FAA staffer wrote another in a 2008 e-mail obtained by The Post. “And apparently, Bob Bononi [a senior FAA official] said we were not to object to these cases.”

Another e-mail explained the deal: The FAA would approve a “determination of no hazard” allowing construction of the trash station, if the Port Authority gave up the sophisticated navigation system and stopped trying to force a College Point concrete plant to lower a 100-foot-tall chimney.

Port Authority and FAA officials did not respond to requests for comment.